Pete Seeger

Sixteen-year-old Pete Seeger enrolled at the Avon Old Farms School in Connecticut and then decided to become a hermit. His life since then has been one social cause after another, buoyed by an almost indefatigable career as a self-described "sing-along leader." During the 1930s he attended Harvard, from which his musicologist father Charles Seeger (a member of the Industrial Workers of the World and a conscientious objector during World War I) had graduated in 1908. As an alternative to his major, Sociology (which he disliked), he played tenor banjo (failing to make the Harvard Jazz Band) and participated in the pacifist/communist Harvard Student Union so much that he lost his scholarship, leaving Harvard in 1938. In 1939 actor/folksinger 'Will Geer' organized the "All-American Left-Wing Folk-Song Revival Movement," a benefit concert for migrant workers in California. It was there that Pete met Woody Guthrie and began touring with him. In 1940 Seeger started the Almanac Singers with L